LONGMONT -- The piano is a relatively new instrument -- it appeared around the dawn of the 18th century -- and to a large degree this is due to its considerable technical sophistication.

The standard modern piano contains 88 keys, and each key, corresponding to 88 different notes ascending in pitch from left to right, comprises a set of precisely arranged mechanical parts, including the key itself, rods, dampers, joints and steel strings, as many as three per note in the lower register.

Since each played note is manifested through multiple strings, a piano usually contains about 250 of them. Each one is susceptible to going out of tune, and each one eventually will go out of tune, due to time, use and climate. So, unlike with a guitar, which a player can easily learn to tune himself, a professional piano tuner is in demand wherever pianos proliferate. That's where Tom Carpenter comes in.

As 2012 draws to a close, the Times-Call takes a look at the people who make our community work, 365 days a year. Through Jan. 2, read about the people whose names and faces might not have been familiar to you, even if the jobs they do are.

Sunday Linda Allour, doughnut maker

Monday Tom Carpenter, piano tuner

Tuesday Jose Chavez, letter carrier

Wednesday Dawn Cavins, crime scene technician

Thursday Kyle Miller, public works director

Friday Larry West, maintainer of school sports facilities

Saturday Deb Romero, blood drawer

Sunday Keith Kendall, wastewater treatment worker

Monday Kris Luis, custom motorcycle builder

Tuesday Clayton Schultz, skydiving pilot

Wednesday Sandy Lenhardt, lunch lady

Carpenter is responsible for the tuning of many of the pianos in East Boulder County. If you've ever heard a recital at a local school, Carpenter's ear was likely involved. He tunes all the pianos in the St. Vrain Valley School District. If you've been to a local friend's house and tinkled away on the host's piano, you might very well have benefited from Carpenter's expertise. Maybe you have a piano and you've employed his services. He's been tuning pianos in the area for two decades. In the mid-1990s, he worked for Chris Finger, a well-known piano dealer in Niwot.

"I was always the speed tuner," Carpenter said of his time at Finger's shop. "When he needed a piano tuned in a hurry, I did it."

When Carpenter was a kid, he became fascinated by the piano. When he'd go to someone's house and there was a piano, he'd walk up with his hands behind his back, careful, like his mother instructed, not to touch it, and inspect it reverentially. His fascination naturally led to an education on the instrument, but at some point he realized, as he put it, that he'd never be the pianist he wanted to be.

"I figured if I worked on pianos, I can be around people who can really play," he said.

It's a safe bet that it's a lover of piano who makes a better tuner. Carpenter, it's clear, when you see him in action, loves the piano.

He starts the process of tuning by removing a board that covers the strings. Then he mutes certain strings so that just one per note is let to reverberate. Tuners today benefit from electronic devices that allow them to gauge each string's tuning, and Carpenter uses a Sanderson Accu-Tuner IV for this task. But he believes a good ear is a competent piano tuner's indispensable tool.

"It's always best to learn how to do it aurally," he said, adding that machines can't always be trusted.

One reason a good ear is a job requirement is that music in general is highly subjective. What you hear is what you get. A chart of frequencies might tell you which ones are prescribed for each note, but in actual performance it doesn't quite work that way. To make a piano sound its best, it must be tuned slightly out of tune. This is due to the way the physics of metal strings of different lengths vibrating at different speeds relate to the impression they make on the human sense of sound. To make the vibrating strings mesh harmonically, the upper portion of the piano, for example, is typically tuned sharp.

"Even in one octave, it's stretched a little bit," Carpenter said.

Piano tuner Tom Carpenter uses a special wrench to turn the pins on the pin block while tuning an upright piano earlier this month at a customer's house in Longmont. (Matthew Jonas/Times-Call)
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Matthew Jonas
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Other factors come into play, such as climate and the peculiarities of particular pianos. A machine may guide a tuner. But only a tuner can decide when a piano is in tune.

One afternoon earlier this month, Carpenter worked on a piano at a client's home in the Prospect neighborhood in Longmont. He completed the job -- which included explaining this and that method to a reporter -- in only about an hour. Then he tested his work by playing "Memories of You," by the American composer Eubie Blake. It was clear from the dulcet chords that Carpenter coaxed from the keyboard that the household, at least for the next several months, would enjoy a well-tuned piano.

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